Drescher & Associates - November 2017

November is a bit of a double-edged sword for me. It has some of my favorite days of the entire year —

and the day I dread more than any other. The good days, of course, have to do with

Thanksgiving. The day before the big holiday is always a welcome time, as we close down the office and take a four-day weekend. It’s a rare occurrence for me to just be able to relax and spend time with my wife. For us, it’s a pretty mellow, low-key celebration, and it’s all the better for it. I’ve always associated the end of November with good times like this — not only because of the holiday, but because of all the special memories I have of growing up and taking time off for the week, whether I got to hang out with friends during high school or head back home and reconnect with my folks when I was in college. As for my least favorite day, that’s a bit of a longer story. When I started the practice back in 1994, my wife used to visit her parents from her hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina. In downtown “Now, for many of our wonderful clients and partners, the ‘Drescher Box’ is a bona fide holiday staple.”

boxes. These days, we actually hire a few extra people to help out with the Herculean task, turning our kitchen into a high-efficiency bakery for as many as 10 grueling days. I couldn’t even tell you how many man-hours go into the process, but I can tell you that constantly baking at every waking moment for over a week is completely exhausting. In the end, we have a stack of over 200 separate gift boxes, all taped up and ready to go. Luckily, they turn out well. In fact, they’re delicious, if I do say so myself. It takes me the entire year to lose the weight I put on from scarfing down the high calorie treats. I’m happy to show this small token of my appreciation for everyone who’s worked with me over the years, but let me tell you, I’m ecstatic when we finally finish off the last batch and get them in the mail. Thanksgiving’s definitely one of the best days

Wilmington, there was a bakery with the best muffins on Earth. When I say the best, I absolutely mean it. It was an unquestionable fact; there wasn’t even a close second. The muffins were so delicious that, in 1997, I got the bright idea to send them off to my clients, as well as the people who referred people to my firm, for the holidays. The gift baskets were a hit — no surprise there — so it became a yearly tradition. But eventually, tragedy struck. The best muffin bakery in the world closed down. As the holiday season approached, my wife and I scrambled to find somewhere else to get a comparable treat, but everywhere else was of lesser quality and way too expensive. So we came up with another bright idea. We’d make the gift baskets, treats and all, ourselves. Since then, for many of our wonderful clients and partners, the “Drescher Box” is a bona fide holiday staple. However, the process of baking, packing and sending off these boxes has become such an overwhelming ordeal that the worst day of the year is when we kick off the production of those treats. Starting in November (usually right after Thanksgiving), my wife and I team up to crank out hundreds and hundreds of magic bars and oat bars to pack in bright holiday bags and send out in white

of the year, but I’m not sure how it can possibly compare to the day when that last cinnamon magic bar pops out of the oven and I can kiss that massive stack of boxes goodbye. –Ron Drescher